DON MCLEAN WAS WRONG; there was never a day the music died. It was silence that departed, after a death by a thousand cuts—musical and otherwise. World population and its handmaidens of industrialization, from lawn mowers to airliners, Jet Skis to fracking, ensured its demise. Efforts to revive silence, such as the U.S. government’s Noise Control Act of 1972, themselves passed away quietly; funding for that law ended in 1981. Local ordinances exist, but most attack errant leaf blowers rather than create comprehensive quiet. Dispatches from around the world report ever-louder ... Read More